(I'm re-posting my older movie reviews from my old blog, because I'm really tired of dusting off MySpace to go hunt for them...)
I really should've saved "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "All About Eve" for this one…but since I didn't get the idea for an all B&W movie column 'til tonight when I was halfway through "Bad Seed," oh well. I'll just have to fill in with one or two movies that I haven't actually watched in the last week. Forgive me for fudging a little. First up, the one that's freshest in my mind…
"The Bad Seed" (1956)
Hoo, boy. You might have seen the quasi-remake of this one – 1993's "The Good Son," which featured McCauley Culkin desperately trying to shed his "Home Alone" image (he says the F-word! Oooh!). Trust me, the original – even in all its studio-era Hays Code glory – is still WAY better. Patty McCormack plays abnormally perfect eight-year old Rhoda, a pioneer in the Creepy Little Kid Actors' Guild that would later include Haley Joel Osment and that cyborg-looking boy from "The Ring." Rhoda's starched crinolines (perfect for curtsying) and heavily engineered platinum pigtails convince almost all the adults in her life that she's this well-mannered little angel. Unfortunately, Rhoda has a barely-concealed antisocial streak, and she doesn't like to lose. I mean, she really doesn't like to lose. As in, when one of her classmates beats her out for the class penmanship prize, they find him the next day floating in the lake…with these mysterious bruises on his head and hands…bruises that perfectly match the metal taps on the heels of Rhoda's favorite shoes… Rhoda's mother Christine has an inkling that her daughter might be slightly…off. She solicits advice from her father, a retired crime writer, as well as yet another crime novelist who happens to be a friend of the family. (Christine's landlord is also an amateur psychoanalyst. These relationships allow for many convenient ruminations on the criminal mind). Dad says criminals are made, not born; crime writer B disagrees, saying that some people are just born bad. Either way, if Rhoda is in fact a psycho killer, it's going to reflect badly on Mom. The film is based on a play which is in turn based on a book, and it wasn't translated very well to film: too many scenes are overly stagey, and it's more talky than it needs to be. Also, the aforementioned Hays Code Office happied up the ending, as they did with many a film of the era. Still, the acting is fantastic – especially McCormack, who got an Oscar nomination. Worth a watch.
"Baby Doll" (1956)
I have this book called "Great Movie Moments," a coffee-table book with classic still shots from hundreds of movies. That was how I came to "Baby Doll" – this one black and white photograph of Carroll Baker curled up in a baby bed, sucking her thumb. That's how her husband Archie Lee (Karl Malden) sees her in the early minutes of the film – watching his teenaged bride through a hole in the wall of his falling down Southern mansion. Basically, Archie Lee and Baby Doll married a few years earlier, with the understanding that he would A) provide for her financially, and B) not have sex with her 'til she turned 19. (I think it's 19…it's been a few months since I saw it.) Their already volatile relationship comes to a head when Archie Lee's business rival Mr. Vacarro (Eli Wallach) decides to use Baby Doll to get back at Archie Lee for…oh, I don't want to ruin it. Being that Tennessee Williams wrote the script, you know there's a lot more to what seems a deceptively simple plot. I don't want to give too much away, because so much of the fun comes from having your sympathies for each character shift as you learn more about their motivations. For something that came out in the 50s, it surprised me that this film was as hot as it was. (Maybe the Hays Code Office fell asleep on this one…) Honestly, if it were released today, it would be pretty controversial. It holds up surprisingly well – and bonus points for making Eli Wallach – dare I say it – sexy. There's a great article about "Baby Doll" in this summer's Oxford American Southern movie issue that does far more justice to "Baby Doll" than I can here.
"The Lady From Shanghai" (1947)
Another one I saw solely because it was featured in "Great Movie Moments." Well…that and my obsessive crush on Orson Welles. I love Orson Welles – even the 300 lb. right-before-he-died Orson Welles. The man was just a genius ahead of his time. Looking at pretty much every film he made after "Citizen Kane," one has to wonder what Welles could produce if he were working today and were not so dependent on studios to get his films made. "The Lady From Shanghai" – which is not a bad film – would likely have been infinitely better. Welles stars as Michael O'Hara, an Irish seaman who's only Irish so Orson Welles can break out an Irish accent…not that there's anything wrong with that. He's somewhat hoodwinked into taking a job on the yacht of wealthy Arthur Bannister, who wants to sail from NYC around to San Francisco. That's not the problem. Bannister's much-younger wife Elsa (played by Rita Hayworth, at the time married to Welles) is the problem. There are clandestine kisses, a murder plot and other various twists and turns. It all culminates in an elaborately staged shootout in an amusement park glass house – a scene that's so "filmic" it would probably piss me off it anyone other than Welles tried to pull it off. Welles gets a free pass from me for the same reason as Robert Rodriguez – when they do these things, I feel like it's coming from a place of gee-whiz love of movie magic, rather than a superior "look what we can do"-ness. Welles and Hayworth have great chemistry, though their marriage was falling apart at the time. Imagine if this were remade with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the leads, and you have some idea of the heat I'm talking about. It must have been thrilling for audiences at the time…and it still is, for the most part.
"Raging Bull" (1980)
I don't care if Scorcese punted the ending of "The Departed;" he built up so much good movie karma with films like "Raging Bull" that it all evens out. I first saw "Raging Bull" when I was about 15 and was just discovering Robert DeNiro, and I just bought the special edition two-disc DVD, which has several commentaries, including one with the (female) editor, which I think is cool. It's a biopic of intensely dysfunctional boxer Jake LaMotta, who was active in the 1940s and 50s. Most actors know this movie because of Method man DeNiro's legendary weight gain for the scenes of LaMotta's later life. But there are so many other fascinating tidbits: it was the last B&W movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar until "Schindler's List" in 1993. Cathy Moriarty, who plays LaMotta's wife Vicki, was only in her late teens when she was cast (her character ages from 14 to her mid-30s) in this, her first movie role. Most people rave about the realism of the boxing sequences, but they're actually deliberately stylized. It reminds me of Renaissance painters: someone like Donatello paints with mathematical precision and balance, yet DaVinci's slightly distorted proportions just feel more real, because they have emotional truth. "Raging Bull" means a lot to me because it got me through some very hard times. To this day, if I'm feeling down, I can watch it and it makes me feel better. I know that's incredibly weird…I figure it's because, no matter how screwed up my life is, at least I'm not chipping the jewels out of my championship belt to make bail. Either that, or seeing something so well-made just makes me happy.
Pic of the Week: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956). See the original, with its moody lighting and heavy anti-Communist allegory. I won't even acknowledge the current Nicole Kidman remake, which not even my future husband Daniel Craig can induce me to see. How can you not love the film that gave us the term "pod people"?
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